printing revolution
Press changed everything
The printing revolution refers to the transformation in communication and knowledge that followed Johannes Gutenberg's development of movable type in 15th-century Europe.
The ability to mass-produce books dramatically lowered costs, spread literacy, and accelerated the exchange of ideas.
Historians credit it with enabling the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the rise of modern education.
The term sometimes applies to later shifts in print technology: The desktop publishing revolution of the 1980s was a second printing revolution.
- Aldus ManutiusRenaissance Venetian master printer
- book tradeCommerce in printed volumes
- mass productionLarge-scale standardized fabrication
- movable typeReconfigurable printing components
- RenaissanceEuropean cultural reawakening
digital publishing · information age · Johannes Gutenberg · Reformation · literacy · reading public · mass communication · political pamphlets · public sphere · e-books · type foundry · paper production · Enlightenment · online journalism · Gutenberg Bible · desktop publishing · letterpress · education reform
- language historystandardization, orthography, spelling reforms, grammar rules, dictionaries
printing revolutionhand copying
Duplicating by writing manually
scriptorium · calligraphy · illuminated manuscripts · oral tradition · amanuensis
printing revolutionoral culture
Society transmitting knowledge verbally
print, printing, printed, printer, printers, prints, printable, reprint, reprinting